While trade tariffs may seem appealing to nationalists, in the long term, a trade war will damage the economies of all countries. Here are the main reasons photographers in America and around the world might not welcome them and why you might consider buying camera gear now.
An Easy Guide to Global Economics
The Trade Deficit 101
America has a powerful economy; in 2023, it represented about 26% of the world’s trade when measured against Gross Domestic Product (GDP). However, it also has a trade deficit. Put very simply, that means it buys more goods and services from other countries than it sells. No country in the world wants to be in that position. Nevertheless, out of around 200 countries, just under 60 have a trade surplus, and most are tiny economies; those surpluses are minuscule.
The balance of trade between two different countries is known as a bilateral trade deficit. It’s easy to assume that if Country A exports more to Country B than B to A, it is bad for B. However, this notion is rejected by economists for a raft of reasons. Not least, goods and services are often produced through complex global supply chains. Therefore, a trade deficit with one country might reflect trade surpluses with others involved in a production process. For example, a Ford F-150 has components made in Canada, Mexico, China, and Thailand.
Moreover, trade balances are influenced by a wide range of other factors, such as national saving and investment rates, exchange rates, and a country’s overall economic growth. If you are interested, there are plenty of online articles on that matter.
GDP 101
We measure our economies’ performance by Gross Domestic Product (GDP). It represents the total value of all goods and services produced by a country over, usually, a year. GDP is increasingly seen as a poor measure of economic performance because law enforcement, prisons, fire services, hospitals, lawyers, the judiciary, drug rehabilitation, the military, and many other services are included in its calculation. Those are indicators of a troubled society. A country could be war-torn, with very high crime, extraordinary levels of violence and murders, and poor population health, yet produce few tangible goods—but its GDP could still be high.
Short-Term Benefits of and Long-Term Detriments of Tariffs
Despite all that, it is tempting to put tariffs on incoming goods. In the short term, it redirects a country’s population to spend their money away from buying imported goods to either saving or buying domestic products.
There’s a problem, though. As we have already seen, other countries will retaliate. Therefore, a country's exports will also be affected.
Let’s say the USA hits Europe with higher tariffs. Inevitably, Europe will retaliate with similar charges against imports from America. Furthermore, European businesses will seek alternative markets and start trading more with Asia, Australia, Africa, and South America, all of which will start trading more with each other instead of America, whose goods have become more expensive. Although the USA is the world’s largest economy, worth about $29.17 trillion, the rest of the globe has an economy of over $73 trillion. When they start trading more among themselves, that will inevitably impact exports from America.
Once each economic area has found those alternative markets and those markets are seen as more stable and trade-friendly, businesses are most likely to stick with their new partners and not go back to trading with America.
What Does This Mean for Photographers
From a photography perspective, it’s not going to help American brands. We live in a global market, and American manufacturers do not have a monopoly on high-quality camera bags or tripods. Those of us who live overseas will buy from elsewhere. There are some excellent products from American companies, including GoPro, Peak Design, Tiffen, Kodak, and Blackmagic Design, whose exports will be hit by retaliatory tariffs. I am a big fan of some of these manufacturers, but if their prices escalate, people in other countries will go elsewhere.
Although the tariffs may be a boon for American producers in the home market in the short term, there are photographic products that America does not produce. Those prices will go up. Is there an American company making flashes ready to compete with Godox, Neewer, Metz, or Profoto?
Of course, American companies could develop these products for their domestic market. Lensbaby could take over the area of the American market held by 7Artisans and TTArtisans. If so, tariffs might help them in America, but their exports will still be hit by the reciprocal tariffs from the rest of the world.
Moreover, developing a new product takes time, money, and expertise.
There is another side to this, too. As I mentioned earlier, many products are built from components and materials originating from a number of different countries. So, those components will be hit by tariffs as well.
A Lesson from Brexit
Isolationism is never good. Bloomberg stated that Brexit is costing the UK economy £100 billion a year, and the economy has shrunk by 5%. Here, we have suffered what is described as a cost-of-living crisis. Brexit has been a major contributing factor to that.
If America overturns trade agreements with its partners, one can expect the economy there to suffer. Prices here are 25% higher now than they were before Brexit, and it caused food prices to increase by 6% from 2020 to 2022. Brexit also saw a drop in the pound’s value by 18%, so imported cameras in the UK increased similarly.
History has repeatedly shown that any move to reduce free trade between nations hurts the country’s economy. But as one wise man said, the one thing we learn from history is that we never learn from history.
Should You Buy Now?
This is all basic common-sense economics you probably learned in school. But why is it a good idea to buy photography gear now? The simple reason is that the products sitting in the shops now were imported before the tariffs were imposed. If you are considering a purchase, grab them now before the prices rocket.
I’d suggest that there’s never been a better time to not buy anything at all. Or buy used if you absolutely have to in order to make money.
No one can predict what’s going to happen, but unless you’re comfortably in the 1% and don’t have to work to live you’ve got more exposure than you might realize.
Inflation>demand collapse>recession>deflation>camera doesn’t matter because you lost your house
Scary but very real possibility
The last thing anyone should do right now is buy depreciable assets.
(Also re: tariffs, it’s only americans that’ll have to pay that premium. For the other 7.5 Billion of us… who cares? What does affect all of us is declining economic prospects for the working class. If you’re a photographer you’ve already probably been getting less work the last year. That’s not on track to improve. Cut your costs, try to grow your savings safety net in non-volatile/non-depreciable assets. You don’t need the new shiny thing more than you might need rent in 6 months, or food.)
Or, camera companies could stop price gouging and make budget gear that people actually want? Does OM systems really need to charge $150 for just a battery charger (NO battery) that is not included with a $2000 camera?
Funny no one ever cared about tariffs before, when many other countries were charging 100% or higher on US exports.
Most Brits didn't really care about EU membership until a certain ham-faced PM bet his re-election on offering a referendum on it, which spectacularly backfired. Leaving us where we are today - isolated and broke.
Timothy Kieper wrote:
"Funny no one ever cared about tariffs before, when many other countries were charging 100% or higher on US exports."
Well said.
With many policies, smaller countries have traditionally been much more strict and acted in more self-interest than the US has. Yet, when the US tries to adopt the same types of policies that other countries have always had, the world gets angry with us. Most of the entire world has far stricter immigration policies than we do, but no one gets angry with those countries for not letting others freely enter. Most countries have had economic policies that are far more self-centered than the US economic policies, but no one gets all angry over that.
Almost every country on earth leverages whatever they have to expand their own interests to the greatest extent possible. Why do people think that the US should not do the same thing?
Turkey's job is not to make the world a better place. It is to make Turkey a better place for its citizens.
Japan's job is not to make the world a better place. It is to make Japan a better place for its citizens.
Algeria's job is not to make the world a better place. It is to make Algeria a better place for its citizens.
Hence, why do people balk at the notion of the United States acting in its own best interest to make itself a better place for its citizens? Why do many people think that the United States should be sacrificing some of its own wealth in order to make the rest of the world better? Why is such a hypocritical mindset so widespread?
That orange lunatic and his 'advisers' is/are going to plunge your now fascist nation into a recession - watch for BRICS and their actions. The USA is finished as a beacon for democratic economic liberalism. In less than 4 years time the USA will be in a civil war as the near 50% of sane people fight to get their democracy back.
To my knowledge OM systems also has changed/advanced almost nothing about their current camera lineup since they stopped being Olympus but still charge modern camera prices which is bonkers to me. it's just old bodies with a new badge and couple of QOL updates that don't really add much.
That's factually incorrect and really has nothing to do with the article, Bob. I am left wondering which company or country you are sponsored by to post this sort of bile.
Got my info from Peta Pixel and I wasn't responding to the article I was responding to Timothy
It's still factually incorrect.
If we read your articles back ... 2 months i am fairly sure we will find more Your opinion vs factually correct ones. One thing that always bugged me when ever i see articles written by You. Respect for your life experience, but as a someone who worked for newspapers as a writer for 10+ years, most opinions are prohibited, due impartial and/or conflicting positions on the matter. Editors just return your piece for you to iron out those kinks and give you a "talk" about boots (weird i know).
Nope.
Olympus cameras have actually changed a lot, albeit in ways that some of us will not find useful.
They are doing all kinds of interesting things with in-camera effects and processing of jpeg versions of the images.
Granted, most super serious photographers shoot only in RAW, and want total control over any and all changes made in editing the files. And we wouldn't dare even think of sharing a photo until it has been edited and scrutinized and color corrected and re-edited. So in-camera effects and profiles and sharing direct from the camera options are not of interest to us.
BUT ..... there are a lot more casual photographers than there are super serious photographers, so the things that Olympus is offering appeal to a lot of people, and many are undoubtedly finding those features enjoyable and useful. They're looking for ways to make photography more fun and easier and more "portable", and I think they're doing a good job of that.
I went from massive DSLR and heavy quality lenses, to having smol PEN F form factor EDC nowdays with one lens. And what you said is true. It made photography FUN again. I was getting tired to drag a large backpack with my stuff around with me in case i see something worth taking a photo of. Now i have "m4/3 smallest boi™" in my back pocket and photos are far better then i expected them to be.
If you go to statista.com you can get a world map showing tariff levels, funny thing - EU is about the same as the US (for 2021-2022 year), Africa, South America, India and the Middle East have the highest tarifs. The current administration keeps targeting EU for VAT - which is a sales tax applied evenly to all goods of a certain type (no matter where they originate) and is certainly not a tariff.
It was frustrating when camera companies stopped supplying a charger with their cameras but a usb cable and wall plug for in camera charging instead. Now most only supply you with a cheap usb cable and no wall plug at all. The additional cost of the charger plus the wall plug is ridiculous. If you are already invested in a brand it might not matter but if you are new to a brand the extra cost just to be able to charge batteries is an issue. Of course there's the 'take your own risk' third party charger route and I've been stung there a few times.
Sam, the USB cable supplied with my camera is very high quality. It needs to be because lower-quality cables don't work when it comes to using the camera as a webcam, for tethering, or for firmware updates. Wall chargers are ubiquitous now and I already have more than I know what to do with, especially as several of my wall sockets have USB charging ports built in. However, I think there should be an option for people to buy an additional charger from the manufacturer should they need one, as opposed to being sold one in a package when they don't. I bought an external charger because I run two cameras and shoot all day at events. However, with my five batteries, I rarely need to use the charger as I barely get through one on a day's shoot.
Timothy, the OM-1 and the OM-3 both have in-body charging, making the necessity of an external charger redundant. The charger that you can buy separately has two battery slots. If it were included in with the cameras, it would have put the production costs up, and that would have a knock-on effect on the price. I would have had to buy it three times. In a world of limited resources, that would not be a good thing.
In this new hostile trading environment I have resolved to not buy anything at all that is produced in the USA. That includes software and services, not just physical products. If I do buy any photography equipment, or any other product for that matter, I will not buy it via Amazon or eBay, or any other American company. Even now, before any tariff driven price rises kick in, I still won’t be spending a penny on US products. If I need an American product that I can’t get elsewhere, I will buy it second hand. I like Apple computers, but my next Mac will definitely be a used one.
When another country takes an aggressive stance towards trade, my response is to vote with my wallet and spend my money elsewhere, regardless of whether prices go up or not.
I applaud your efforts to take a stand and vote with your wallet. In many ways, this is what the retaliatory tariffs are doing.
On a side note, I've been saying for years that second-hand is the way forward for many people when it comes to technology. Let someone stump up the full price. I'm more than happy to be a generation or two out of date. It's a happy accident that the manufacturer won't see my money.
I do wonder how the like of Apple will play this game globally as their devices are not built in the US. Will tariffs only apply to products sold in territories that US tariffs apply, or will they simply increase the prices everywhere?
Andrew, I am interested to know .....
Do you think that it would be fair for the United States to have a tariff policy that is precisely reciprocal for each and every country that it trades with?
Or, do you think that the United States should charge lower tariffs on incoming goods than the countries it trades with charge on U.S. imports?
I don’t profess to be an expert in economics. Would it be fair to have a precisely reciprocal tariff policy? I don’t know. I imagine it’s a pretty complicated subject.
What I do know is I that I take exception to anyone using coercion, bullying, or strong-arm tactics to impose their view on the rest of the world. I firmly believe that the right way to do things is through negotiation. Is that not what the World Trade Organization was created for?
I agree entirely with Ivor Rackham; an aggressive policy of imposing tariffs is guaranteed to provoke a retaliatory response from other countries. I find it hard to believe that world trade has been to the USA’s disadvantage up until now; with America being the most powerful country in the world.
Personally I believe in collaboration and cooperation. The idea of making myself richer at someone else’s expense does not appeal to me.
If the USA's attempts to level the playing field with reciprocal tariffs are coercion, bullying, and strong arm tactics, what words do you have for the trade policies of China and the EU? They have routinely used much higher protective tariffs to exclude US products from their markets. China also requires tech companies to surrender intellectual property to their Chinese competition, and the EU has imposed technical specifications requiring meaningless design changes to sell products there.
Unless you consider those practices to be collaboration and cooperation, I'd expect your personal embargo to vastly shrink your market for new goods.
So the playing field is not level and the most powerful nation on earth is the victim. I’m scratching my head trying to understand how this came about. If I understand it correctly, the world's greatest superpower has until now been lying down and letting other countries walk all over it. I find that very hard to believe.
No victim, but foolish often enough.
The US is not a victim, but we have failed to leverage our power to the fullest extent. We haven't been letting other countries walk all over us, but we have failed to get as much as we could have gotten.
I sometimes feel that the rest of the world thinks that because we are so wealthy, that we should be willing miss out on even more wealth, so that we can help other nations. Our job is not to help others prosper, it is to prosper ourselves, and we should do so at the absolute biggest extent possible.
Tom... Yes it is the duty of everyone in every country to try and do their best to make the world a better place. A kind word, picking up a piece of trash that someone else left behind, the Peace Corps, fair trade to lift up other nations out of poverty... it all matters.
Stockpiling wealth without regard for the less fortunate of the world, country, or community inevitably leads to bad things. Consider the Russian Revolution in 1917 or France from 1789-1799. America was born out of a tax revolt. The list is endless. Our responsibility as a world leader of nations is, indeed, to promote peace and prosperity in the world. And you can't have one without the other.
We can't live as isolationists as we may have done in the 1700s or 1800s. We need fair trade, or some countries will seek to acquire what they need by force. We need to help poor countries rise out of poverty. It keeps the peace, and keeps money flowing into our companies like Apple as more people worldwide buy iPhones. It's like we were debating in another article... it's not a limited amount of wealth (zero-sum) where we can only achieve more at the expense of the other person or country. We must look at this in a way that everyone can get ahead, and that's hard to accomplish if you only see politics or foreign relations as winners and losers.
We need fair educational and job opportunities, including a fair wage, or the middle class shrinks into poverty. As long as the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer, the risk of violence always becomes greater. Doesn't matter whether it's here in the US or poorest country in Africa. Although in the US, revolution is too messy. So we end up with increasingly higher rates of suicide, gun violence, depression and drug addiction. You might argue that those issues having nothing to do with economic disparity, but I believe there's a strong correlation. Unfortunately our system of government in the US is broken so nothing constructive ever gets done, which opens the door to an authoritarian con artist.
Tariffs are only a small part of the problem. They are fluid, and nobody can foresee what might happen tomorrow. But rest assured, until the US regains respect from its allies and trading partners, nothing good will come out of this. I'm not even sure which tariffs have been actually been imposed, threatened, reversed or delayed. It all just sounds like chaos to me. Apparently the stock market thinks so too. Either way, the consequences of foreign relations, of which free trade is a part, are too significant in an inter-connected world to screw it up.
Fascinating discussion, everyone. Thank you. It's interesting hearing both sides all conducted in a respectful and friendly manner, even if you disagree with each other or me! It's often claimed that the art of friendly debate is dead, but maybe it isn't.
Keep your seat belt fastened... the flight into political territory can turn unexpectedly snarky and disrespectful in a hurry.
Ivor, I respect you and Ed and others a heck of a lot, even though you have world values and priorities that are quite opposed to mine.
People who are on the "other side" of things are not idiots, they just want different things than I do. The things that are so important to me and my happiness are not so important to you. And the things that are so important to you and your happiness are not very important to me.
No reason to hate each other just because we want different things in this world. It's okay to be different, right?
Very well said.
Ed,
You definitely see humanity as one big whole, a "collective", if you will.
I see humanity as a lot of groups that are better kept separate and distinct from one another.
When I was a kid in elementary and junior high school, in the late 1970s an 1980s, we were constantly being told that the U.S. was so much better than any other nation on Earth. We were taught what the GNP was, and how ours dwarfed that of any other nation. We were taught about our military and how it was by far the mightiest in the world. We were taught about our individual freedoms, and how people in the rest of the world were so restricted by their governments and how they weren't allowed to do so many of the things that we were allowed to do.
And you know what? It felt really great to be part of a group that was superior to the other groups!
I do not have the strength or the work ethic or the brilliance to have my life be better than most other people. As an individual I am quite average in most areas and a bit below average in the work ethic area. But I want to have it really good; better than most. So I find ways to identify with groups that have it better than other groups.
If I live in a country that has amazing and diverse geography, and the freedom to explore all of it without restrictions or requirements, then I feel that I have it so much better than those in so many other countries, and it feels great to know that I get to enjoy things that most others don't.
If I am a fan of a football team, and that team is at the top of the league, and wins championships, and is the envy of the fans of all the other teams, then it feels great, and identifying with that team makes my life happier.
You see the worldwide human population as a whole. I see it as a whole lot of distinct groups, some of which have it much better than others. And I want to be part of the groups that have it really good, because I do not have the inner qualities to make things good on my own merit.
I don't recall being directly taught in elementary school that America was the greatest nation on earth, although I do remember vague generalities in that regard. It hadn't been that long since the end of WW2, and at least we understood that the US had played a major role in winning the war. A noble effort it was, too.
But opinions changed throughout the 1960s in a way that were different for me than you later on in the 80s. Some of my earliest memories were of the Cuban/Russian missile crisis and Kennedy assassination. It made no sense to me as a third-grader why another country would shoot a nuclear missile at my school, or why anyone would kill a president. By the mid to late 1960s, there was no false sense of American superiority. We were mired in a Vietnam conflict that we could not win, and no consensus that we should even be there in the first place. The world is increasingly dangerous... it's essential that we cooperate as equal partners or you may find out how little superiority we actually have in this world. It's all temporary. Just like your sports teams which win a national championship one year and stink the next. Perpetual superiority is merely a dream.
Then why was the economy going gangbusters with tarifs from 2017 to the fake pandemic created by the democrats.
Also USA doesn't make Canon or Sony type cameras so no tariffs.
The "fake" pandemic originated apparently in China and killed over 7 million people worldwide, without respect to political preferences. Surely I must be misunderstanding what you're saying.
Hi Lawrence. I often hear about people believing conspiracy theories about the pandemic but until now I hadn't come across anyone who actually believed them. Congratulations on being the first. Do you also think the world is flat, man didn't walk on the moon, vaccines were designed by Bill Gates to control us, and climate change isn't real? I am genuinely interested to know.
My view on the COVID-19 crisis: your so-called fake pandemic caused the death of people I loved and many more that I knew. The Coronavirus also made me very unwell and has affected the long-term health of several people I know. The outbreak also stopped me from visiting my mother in her care home several times during the last months of her life. So, It didn't seem fake to me at the time.
During the pandemic, I was living under a Conservative government here in the UK. It affected countries ruled by regimes under the entire political spectrum. That doesn't really cohere with your political idea that it was a Democrat conspiracy, does it?
I'm also a bit bemused by your comment about Sony and Canon. They will be subject to import tariffs into the US as they are made outside your country.
Ivor Rackham wrote:
"I'm also a bit bemused by your comment about Sony and Canon. They will be subject to import tariffs into the US as they are made outside your country."
You are, of course, correct, Ivor.
While I do not like the thought of cameras costing us more than they already do, I see that there is a broader, more long-term aspect to this. Or at least in theory there is.
If import tariffs are so high, for so long, eventually that could lead to a US-owned company thinking seriously about manufacturing cameras right here in the United States.
I think that one goal of higher tariffs is to encourage us to make more things ourselves, right here in the U.S. Of course that will take a very long time to become reality, as it can take years, even decades, to set up and tool up for making things as specialized and complex as high-end cameras. But if tariffs are high enough, and remain high enough long enough, then it is reasonable to think that in 15 to 20 years, the United States might have a company or two that makes cameras right here on our own country.
Now we just have to figure out a way to make it so that if there are such companies making cameras here, we can prevent outside interests from buying stock or investing private capital in them, so that the profits can stay here in the U.S. Currently, because of foreign investment in our companies, little bits of the wealth that we generate are being spread throughout the world, instead of staying here and benefiting us, and we need to figure out a way to stop the leaking. Other countries have very strict restrictions on foreign investment, and no one complains, so why can't we do the same thing those countries are doing without the world complaining about it? I do feel that the U.S. is often held to different standards, and I think that is wrong.
Are we “great again” yet?
We're sure on the right track, finally. But it'll take quite some time for everything to turn around. Enacting the proper policies is just the beginning, it takes years and years for the benefits to come to fruition.
Who was it that said that the one thing we learn from history is that we never learn from history. It will be facinating to see whether the outcome of the tarriffs will be similar to those of Smoot-Hawley tariffs nearly 100 years ago.
I feel sorry for great American photography businesses whose enormous overseas trade will suffer because they will struggle to compete on the international stage. Plus, they will have increases in domestic prices if their manufacturing is outside the US as they will be charged import tariffs on their goods. I'm especially thinking about the best camera bag and strap manufacturers.
I’m fascinated to see how this plays out. As a result of tariffs on Chinese imports, Chinese made shoes now cost the same as shoes made in the U.S. A new factory making shoes is opened in America and jobs are created for Americans. So far, so good. The ‘playing field has been levelled’. The problem is that American workers in the new shoe factory will want be paid American wages, not Chinese wages. Therefore the American people will have to accept that from now on their shoes are a lot more expensive. I wonder how pleased they will be.
If I remember my high school economics correctly, looking at the supply and demand curves, as the price increases, the demand will fall. As the demand falls, so the supply will also drop or there will be a glut of shoes. This will inevitably lead to a drop in income for the manufacturers.
From an international perspective, if the price of American shoes go up because of reciprocal tarriffs, countries will buy from other markets that are cheaper. Japan will buy British shoes and Australian camera bags instead of American.
That's the mechanism that led to the great depression, so it will be interesting to see if the same applies nearly a century later.
From an environmental perspective, the inevitable drop in consumption might be good for the planet.